The History of the Peloponnesian War

Page: 74

"If you shrink before the exertions which the war makes necessary, and
fear that after all they may not have a happy result, you know the reasons
by which I have often demonstrated to you the groundlessness of your
apprehensions. If those are not enough, I will now reveal an advantage
arising from the greatness of your dominion, which I think has never yet
suggested itself to you, which I never mentioned in my previous speeches,
and which has so bold a sound that I should scarce adventure it now, were
it not for the unnatural depression which I see around me. You perhaps
think that your empire extends only over your allies; I will declare to
you the truth. The visible field of action has two parts, land and sea. In
the whole of one of these you are completely supreme, not merely as far as
you use it at present, but also to what further extent you may think fit:
in fine, your naval resources are such that your vessels may go where they
please, without the King or any other nation on earth being able to stop
them. So that although you may think it a great privation to lose the use
of your land and houses, still you must see that this power is something
widely different; and instead of fretting on their account, you should
really regard them in the light of the gardens and other accessories that
embellish a great fortune, and as, in comparison, of little moment. You
should know too that liberty preserved by your efforts will easily recover
for us what we have lost, while, the knee once bowed, even what you have
will pass from you. Your fathers receiving these possessions not from
others, but from themselves, did not let slip what their labour had
acquired, but delivered them safe to you; and in this respect at least you
must prove yourselves their equals, remembering that to lose what one has
got is more disgraceful than to be balked in getting, and you must
confront your enemies not merely with spirit but with disdain. Confidence
indeed a blissful ignorance can impart, ay, even to a coward's breast, but
disdain is the privilege of those who, like us, have been assured by
reflection of their superiority to their adversary. And where the chances
are the same, knowledge fortifies courage by the contempt which is its
consequence, its trust being placed, not in hope, which is the prop of the
desperate, but in a judgment grounded upon existing resources, whose
anticipations are more to be depended upon.

"Again, your country has a right to your services in sustaining the
glories of her position. These are a common source of pride to you all,
and you cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its
honours. You should remember also that what you are fighting against is
not merely slavery as an exchange for independence, but also loss of
empire and danger from the animosities incurred in its exercise. Besides,
to recede is no longer possible, if indeed any of you in the alarm of the
moment has become enamoured of the honesty of such an unambitious part.
For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it
perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe. And men of these retiring
views, making converts of others, would quickly ruin a state; indeed the
result would be the same if they could live independent by themselves; for
the retiring and unambitious are never secure without vigorous protectors
at their side; in fine, such qualities are useless to an imperial city,
though they may help a dependency to an unmolested servitude.